


Sight

by LittleRaven



Category: Leaf by Niggle - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 21:38:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5471636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRaven/pseuds/LittleRaven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Niggle leaves, Parish waits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cinaed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinaed/gifts).



He didn’t know how long he’d be alone, but it wouldn’t be too hard, here. Parish would just have to keep doing the same things, gardening and building until his wife came. 

And he did have to marvel. It went hand in hand with the other things; the fact that he was living in a canvas. It didn’t seem to fit, though he had no trouble believing it. He wished he had let Niggle finish it back then, so more people might have seen it. Parish would have to settle for an audience of Niggle, his wife, and himself; it. Was that enough?

Lemnicia was there before long, rolling down the hill in the way she had used to long ago; Parish looked up from his red and heavy-scented flowers to see her and was not surprised. Fully stretched, face and hair a collection of grass, she landed smiling tremulously, as if at a sudden possibility that might be taken away.

She noticed the Tree first, and knelt between the roots to touch the little yellow flowers Niggle had planted there. 

Parish moved towards her. In the time before the trip, he might have picked one of the red flowers. Or, if he went back to certain times, he wouldn’t have thought of it, or he would found it a bother, and excused himself with the assumption that she wouldn’t care beyond making him fetch a vase for it. This had been wrong, he now knew, though he felt no sadness or regret; he would simply make it different. Only here, the flowers needn’t be picked. They would last to be looked at every day. 

Lemnicia greeted him with her own lack of surprise. She turned at his shadow and clasped his hands, pulling him down. “Did you plant these? What a forest to set them in!” 

“Niggle did. This place is called Niggle’s Picture, or Niggle’s Country, though he’s already moved on. I couldn’t understand it. I’m still not sure I do. But it’s what he was doing all that time, with the canvas in the shed.”

“What a secret mind he had! And us never knowing! It didn’t fit with anything of the country. I do wish we’d spared the energy for that kind of thinking. We might have liked each other much more.”

“We’ll meet him again eventually, Lemnicia. That’s how it seemed; he was here before I was, and put in a word for me—then a man at the border to the Mountains led him away to another place.”

She looked over his shoulder, and said, “Ah, and I will thank him for this place, but it seems he didn’t work alone. Those are your red flowers back there. ” 

Lemnicia tugged him up with her, and they ran to the garden and the house. She set about touching and kneeling over every flowerbed, and where his potatoes grew. She told him it was as if each one was his best work, only somehow purified, made whole. She would have to get busy herself, she said, to make the house her own contribution; he found himself taking an interest in her curtains and her candle-making. She was more renewed than ever, and he wanted to provide the support he’d decided was inessential in their old country. They would head into the Mountains, but first they would learn all the uses of flowers and scents. Parish felt the picture deepening, somehow; he decided he would have to ask Niggle how to define this. He liked the idea of learning to talk about the picture. 

When the shepherd came to meet them, both were ready. They were going to see the sheep and the hill flowers. They also knew Niggle might be there, and he was. Parish introduced Lemnicia and shook his hand again. He said, “Did you create all this too, Niggle?”

Niggle said, “I saw a bit of it, but only that. The snow shining on a mountain peak. Never the sheep, and the big sky, and the way the grass feels underfoot.” He danced for a full five seconds with his shepherd’s staff; Parish and Lemnicia struck theirs together and danced with him, laughing. It seemed, Parish thought, that Niggle smiled smiled as if receiving a gift.

They both thanked him for his country, sure it was somehow his even if he hadn’t known it all. Niggle began to teach them about the sheep; Lemnicia took to it well, recalling how her grandparents had kept sheep too, but Parish needed a little more instruction. For one, they moved more than plants did. They were still quite slow, so he wondered why they needed to bother at all. Niggle compared it to how thoughts were always moving, especially when you wanted to catch and lay them out. Parish had to sleep as he worked. It was odd to wake up and then sleep again between incidents of sheep running into valleys, though never over the Edge--they knew that much without needing to be told. 

He said as much one day. “We move with the sheep, who do as they please; is that really how you lived? Your canvas was like these sheep?" The question tumbled out like it had been waiting long before he knew to ask. He didn’t think he’d enjoy dealing with other things with a life like that, even here. 

“I think it was. Only I didn’t always do it right; in fact I often put it off and let what I wanted leave because I didn’t want to put it down yet.”

“And because I interrupted you so much.”

“I had plenty of time alone that I didn’t use. You only came when you needed to, just as I went to you when I thought you had something I wanted.”

“I’ll keep doing this here, and I don’t know if it will be enough—”

“It’s more than enough, and I hope for you too. It’s not just my country anymore. I’m glad of it.” Niggle hooked a sheep around the neck and tugged gently. “This is much better than canvas in a shed.”

Parish said, “I don’t know if anyone ever saw it besides you, but I’m glad you had that glimpse there, Niggle. I’m glad you could find it for a little while.” He was flushed with the knowledge that he and Lemnicia both were getting to see it now. He petted a sheep.

"I should've done more with it. Now you're here, and you give me your sight."


End file.
